Movies of 1980

The first Friday the 13th movie was great in its day, but time has not been so kind to it. If you watch this movie and then pretend the other 10 movies with Jason in them never happened (and the remake on the way) then this Friday still works well.

When you think of the other movies though, you really miss Jason and as good as Betsy Palmer is as Jason's nutty mom, you just can't help but wish he was in this first outing for the franchise as a killing machine.

Just look at the flixster page for this first movie to see what I mean. It's all Jason??? WRONG!!!

So I'm going do this review without thought for Jason (killing Jason) or the other movies.
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So it's 1980 and it's a year after Carpenters Halloween, what you get here is a cash-in pure and simple, sure it's a great cash-in but it's one all the same as it's ticks all the Halloween boxes.

Unseen nutjob POV? Check.

Great nutjob score? Check.

Horny teens that are sure to die for their sins? Check.

Almost pure as the driven snow female teen that is sure to live at least past the first movie? Check

Lots of gory ways for the horny teens to meet a sticky end? Check

Old timer actor or actress to lend some credibility to the movie? Check

Start of a movie franchise that will last forever? Big Check.

So yea! It ticks every box and it works very well because of it, it's almost a law now to have such things in these movies and these early slashers wrote the rules.

So what works with this movie? The cast of mostly unknown teens do there job well, they overact when they see the camera and you can almost hear them say 'please sign me up for big time movie stardom' before the 5 mins of screen time they have is up when they die. Although Kevin Bacon is still the only face I know well (Bings son Harry Crosby is in this, but did not follow in his dads footsteps but instead became an investment banker)

The music score is ace as it says 'kill them mommy' over and over in a haunting errie way...

Betsy Palmer is great as young Jasons mom, out to stop any more kids from getting hurt, although I'm sure she did not need to use big sharp pointy things to actually get her point across? hehe!

The on location setting works very well.

The Bad -

The pace is just all off when we meet Jasons Mom, in fact the pace in this movie is pretty slow all the way through, what worked in 1980 seems very dated now and a so called rollercoaster ride back then is more like a baby crawl now.

Overall, it's a great start to a series of movies that's still going strong today, sure it's a bit slow paced and dated, but it's also still fun, has a great baddie, and thick as mince teens are always worth watching as they are sliced and diced for just being horny and stooooped.


(reviewed 18th Oct 2008.. Source? R2 UK DVD)